Coromandel Calling

I have a great friend who truly understands the meaning of her birthday. For her, it's a time of celebrating with close friends and each year for the past few years a small group has been off to some wild and wacky places for an afternoon of great food and wine and lots of laughs.

This year it took a more leisurely turn. A whole weekend!! And not just a couple of nights in some small shack in some small backwater. Not for her special friends. We spent two fabulous nights in the beachfront home at Matarangi on the Coromandel Peninsula. Matarangi was one of the first "panned seaside developments" in New Zealand and you can see the developer's vision in the red covered roads and the tidy layout. Not so all the houses that have or have not been built. This development is a delightful mix of the Kiwi bach and million dollar homes sitting side by side in relative peace and harmony. There are still many of the prerequisite "sheds" on some properties and a fair scattering of 60's caravans still cover proposed building sites.

I confess to being a very errant Kiwi in that I haven't been to the Coromandel in more years than I care to remember and so, for me it was another adventure. Like so many other palces I have travelled around New Zealand, the scenery was breathtaking. As we hugged the shoreline driving up the coast from Thames I was in awe of the panorama that unfolded at each corner. What I was also grateful for was that there had been no concession to the amount of development on the peninsula. The road was still only two lanes with a lot of one-way bridge systems and the topography had been followed - not changed. Mind you, I wouldn't like to be in the stream of traffic trying to get to or from your holiday place during the high season.

We enjoyed a mix of weather of the weekend. Friday was gloriously fine and we felt sorry for all the people at work (not really). Saturday was overcast but didn't stop a very long foreshore walk and nosey around the many deserted properties (all within proper limits). Sunday morning - although grey - was still warming and leisurely as we packed up and headed for our various homes.

We all shared in the cooking - it was like our own mini 'Master Chef' with the range of culinary skills on show. The evenings were spent watching whatever took our fancy on TV while we gossiped away the hours. Nobody was spared the gossip rod!!!!

Saluting our Kiwi heritage of ingentuity we even came up with an inventive use for the many large cockle shells we found. Individual serving dishes for olives, dukkah and oil. Even great for holding sea salt and cracked pepper. Bet Cuisine magazine cracks onto that trend when they hear of it. Remember it came from here.

The drive back was just as delightful and I strongly recommend this part of our little heaven to everyone.

THE BEST.................this is getting monotonous - but it was the views AGAIN!!!!

THE WORST...............once again the roads need mentioning. More than ever I believe our forefathers were paid by the kilometre when they dug these roads. More twists and turns than a Stieg Larsson drama (there's another story). The ants also get a mention - they certainly love beach houses.

I AM LEARNING........not all grass is friendly. What look like innocent dead stretches of lawn are actually killer patches of small prickles (bindies for the Aussies). You don't know about until you are right in the thick of it - and no one has any shoes.